Increasing raw material prices worldwide are a challenge for animal production with poor economy. Furthermore, feed utilization is not optimal, as pigs and poultry do not produce NSP enzymes and therefore up to 15-25% of the feed ration is not digested (Barletta, 2011).
Animals use enzymes to digest feed. Enzymes can be produced by the animal itself or by the microbes present in the gut or they can be added as feed additives. 15-25% of the feed is not digested by pigs and poultry due to lack of enzymes or due to the content of indigestible anti-nutritional factors interfering with the digestive process (Barletta, 2011).
In feed rations comprising by-products such as Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles (DDGS) or wheat bran even a larger amount of nutrients from the feed will not be digested due to high amounts of non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) as pigs and poultry cannot produce NSP enzymes.
WO03/093420 describes methods for enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulose substrates for the production of ethanol and assays using sterilized and concentrated culture supernatants from unidentified strains.
WO03/093420 provides no suggestion or hint that a Bacillus strain can be used in a method for assaying whether a Bacillus composition comprising at least one Bacillus strain is capable of increasing the amount of available sugar from animal feed comprising non-starch polysaccharides (NSP), said method comprising incubating the animal feed with the Bacillus composition at 37° C. for 24 hours, measuring the absorbance in a dinitrosalicylic acid (DNS) assay at OD540 and calculating the amount of sugar (hexose) equivalents produced by correlating the measured absorbance to a standard curve.